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Donald Trump rarely accepts counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and compliment the American leader.

But, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has adopted a different strategy by urging the White House to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “dishonest judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received backing from Maga figures, such as an social media message by former close Trump ally the billionaire, who has in the past boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the leader's recent intervention come at a time of unmatched threats to court autonomy and specific justices in the US, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using similar authoritarian tactics employed by rulers in nations such as Türkiye, Hungary, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to weaken government oversight.

The president's online call last week was just the latest in a string of provocations and claims he has made against the American judiciary, such as a spring assertion that the US was “experiencing a court takeover,” and ridicule of a court's ruling to stop removal operations sending suspected illegal immigrants to his country's harsh correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued amid social media criticism on Oregon federal judge Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a latest press gaggle.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking the administration from mobilizing the military reserves, initially in Oregon then in the West Coast state. The president has been eager to dispatch troops into the city, which the leader has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Targeting Justices

Miller, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of criticizing judges who have blocked Trump's executive orders or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Prior to returning to power this year, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and the justices have pointed to a increased climate of risks and coercion in the months since he re-entered the White House.

Rising Threat Statistics

According to information gathered by the federal agency, in 2025 through the end of September, there were over five hundred threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already eclipsed 2022, and 2024, and is on track to top the previous year's record of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the national level. Data from Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence directed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists state that the threats are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In May, the watchdog group published a detailed report claiming that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies align with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in calls for removal and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of the organization, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for ouster. Attacking the courts is another move in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Strongman Playbook

That march towards autocracy has been well-trodden in the past decade in multiple nations, including by Bukele.

In 2021, immediately after commencing a new term in the face of constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and five judges on the constitutional court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting pandemic policies, were replaced by new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges in 2019; and attempts at similar moves in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be seen as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges the administration disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at the university who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by authoritarians abroad.

“The government is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Citing examples such as Miller’s persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They directly criticize the judiciary by repeating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They persist in reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the executive has greater authority than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

The professor said: “Justices' sole safeguard is public trust in the authority of their capacity to make those rulings. Personal intimidation on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges hesitate about judgments that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for the political system.”

Coercion Methods

Scheppele, academic of social science and global studies at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “autocratic legalism” by the such as the Hungarian and the Russian, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a series of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unsolicited pizza deliveries with the customer listed as a name, the son of Judge Esther Salas, who was murdered at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“Everyone knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. We’re coming for you,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the federal police. And those are both specialized police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on justices.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a federal judge is highly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently